1. Sinyavsky–Daniel trial By Charlie and James

2. Background The Sinyavsky–Daniel trial was a trial against Russian writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, which took place in Moscow between September 1965 and February 1966. It was the first Soviet show trial during which writers were openly convicted solely for their literary work. The trial is widely considered to mark the end of the period of Khruschev's liberalism and was a major starting impulse for the modern Soviet dissident movement.

3. Background  Sinyavsky and Daniel’s works were sent to France through a woman who worked at the French embassy in Moscow.  The books appeared under the pseudonyms Abram Tertz for Andrei Sinyavsky, and Nikolai Arzhak for Yuli Daniel.  Eventually the KGB in Paris revealed who the authors were, and on 8 th September 1965 they were arrested and put on trial.  Despite pleading not guilty, they were declared traitors, with Sinyavsky receiving seven years hard labour in a camp, and Daniel getting five years.

4. Internal Reaction to the Trial  Then-recent Nobel laureate Mikhail Sholokhov referred to the two writers as "werewolves" and "thugs with a black conscience“, who would deserve a significantly more severe punishment "in the memorable twenties".  The trial provoked protests and was argued that the trial itself did more harm than the works of the writers.

5. Reaction Abroad  The trial was universally condemned in the Western media, and drew criticism from public figures from around the world.  Criticism of the trial and sentences was also shared by socialist and communist publications in Great Britain, the United States, Italy, and France.  US ambassador to the UN, Arthur Goldberg described the trial as "an outrageous attempt to give the form of legality to the suppression of a basic human right."

6. Solzhenitsyn By Jake and Sim

7. Solzhenitsyn Background  Full Name: Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn  Born: 11 December 1918  Died: 3 August 2008 (aged 89)  Occupations: Novelist, Historian, short story Writer  Type of Dissidence: Outspoken critic of the USSR, Particularly of its Totalitarianism

8. Dissidence  Imprisoned for sending letters to a friends which contained derogatory comments about Stalin.  After his release he was allowed to publish “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” with Khrushchev’s approval.  He then went on to publish “The Gulag Archipelago” which highlighted his personal experience of going through the Gulag system. Although it was not published in the USSR, it received criticism from the soviet press.

9. Reaction of the regime  He was sentenced to 8 years in a labour camp for his derogatory letters about Stalin, followed by an internal exile in Kazakhstan.  In 1965 the KGB confiscated some of his papers in Moscow.  1969 Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Union Of Writers.  In August 1971, the KGB made an alleged attempt to assassinate him.  12 February 1974, Solzhenitsyn was arrested and deported the next day from the Soviet Union to West Germany and stripped of his Soviet citizenship. The KGB had found the manuscript for the first part of The Gulag Archipelago.

10. Interesting Facts  Raised in poor conditions on what eventually became a collective farm.  He was treated for Cancer in 1954.  Had 2 wives and 3 children (all by his second wife Natalia)  Won several awards, notably a Nobel Prize for Literature. He could not receive the prize personally in Stockholm at that time, since he was afraid he would not be let back into the Soviet Union. He eventually claimed it in 1974 after his expulsion from the USSR.  Eventually returned to Russia after the USSR dissolved.

11. ANDREI SAKHAROV BY FATEHA BEGUM AND HANNAH DAVIES

12. Background: Andrei Sakharov was a nuclear physicist, soviet and a human rights activist He was the designer of the Soviet Union’s Third Idea He supported East- West cooperation and the new human rights movement In 1972 Sakharov became the target of sustained pressure and intimidation He had a strong international profile which caused him to face state persecution Nobel Peace Prize Winner in 1975

13. Dissent: Sakharov became increasingly aware of the dangers of nuclear testing He wrote a number of letters to leading Soviet figures about side-effects and consequences of nuclear arms In 1957, he wrote about the hazards of radiation and nuclear testing, some of which were published in the Western world He published ‘Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom’ in 1968

14. Reaction: Sakharov was removed from the Soviet Atomic Energy Commission He couldn’t collect his Nobel Peace Prize in 1975 His criticism of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan led to his banishment In 1986 he was allowed to return to Moscow and was elected to the new Congress of People’s Deputies. He died in December 1989

16. ROY MEDVEDEV By Matthew Rowlands and Nick Payne and his dog

17. BACKGROUND  Roy Aleksandrovich Medvedev was born on 14 th November 1925  He is a Russian political writer renowned as the author of the dissident history of “Stalinism, Let History Judge”, first published in English in 1972  Became a prominent Russian public figure and served as a consultant to Mikhail Gorbachev.  Son of Aleksander Romanovich Medvedev, a professor of Military- Political Academy and has an identical twin brother, the biologist Zhores Medvedev.  Their father was arrested in 1938, during one of Joseph Stalin's purges, and died in a labour camp in 1941.  Medvedev graduated from the Leningrad University. After joining the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956 Medvedev pursued a teaching career before becoming a researcher in the Soviet Academy of Pedagogical Sciences. Why Brezhnev ?!?!?

18. NATURE OF DISSIDENCE  In the early 1960s, Medvedev was engaged in samizdat publications. Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet Union in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader.  He was critical of the unscientific nature of Lysenkoism. Lysenkoism was a political campaign against genetics and science-based agriculture conducted by Trofim Lysenko, his followers and Soviet authorities.

19. REGIME REACTION  Medvedev was expelled from the Communist Party in 1969 after his book Let History Judge was published abroad. The book criticized Stalin and Stalinism at a time when official Soviet propagandists were trying to rehabilitate the former General Secretary.  “Let History Judge” reflected the dissident thinking that emerged in the 1960s among Soviet intellectuals who, like Medvedev, sought a reformist version of socialism.  He announced his position, along with Andrei Sakharov and others, in an open letter to the Soviet leadership in 1970.  Medvedev was often subject to house arrest and KGB harassment under Leonid Brezhnev after 1969, but managed to publish many more critical writings on Soviet history and politics abroad.

20. NATALYA GORBANEVSKAYA ‘ONE OF THE MOST VISIBLE WOMEN IN THE SOVIET HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT’- THE TELEGRAPH

21. SUMMARY NATALYA GORBANEVSKAYA WAS A SOVIET POET, AUTHOR AND DISSIDENT, BORN IN MOSCOW 26 TH MAY 1936. SHE GRADUATED FROM LENINGRAD UNIVERSITY IN 1964 AND BECAME A TECHNICAL EDITOR AND TRANSLATOR. IN 1968 SHE WAS ONE OF THE FOUNDERS AND FIRST EDITORS OF THE SAMIZDAT MAGAZINE ‘A CHRONICLE OF CURRENT EVENTS’ WHICH RAN UNTIL DECEMBER 1982.

22. 1968 RED SQUARE DEMONSTRATION IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1968, COMMUNIST LEADER, ALEXANDER DUBCEK, ATTEMPTED MAJOR REFORMS IN ORDER TO ALLOW ADDITIONAL RIGHTS TO CZECH CITIZENS. THIS WAS SEEN BY THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT AS A THREAT TO THEIR TOTALITARIAN CONTROL AND IN AUGUST THAT YEAR TROOPS POURED INTO CZECHOSLOVAKIA IN ORDER TO CRUSH THE LIBERAL REFORMS OTHERWISE KNOWN AS THE ‘PRAGUE SPRING’. NATALYA GORBANEVSKAYA WAS ONE OF EIGHT PROTESTERS IN THE 25 AUGUST 1968 RED SQUARE DEMONSTRATION AGAINST THE SOVIET INVASION OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA. SHE RECALLS REACHING INTO THE PRAM AND PULLING OUT A CZECH FLAG AND BANNERS READING ‘FOR YOUR FREEDOM AND OURS’ AND ‘HANDS OFF CZECHOSLOVAKIA’.

23. GOVERNMENT RESPONSE UNDERCOVER KGB AGENTS THEN ENDED THE DEMONSTRATIONS JUST MINUTES LATER SHOUTING 'THESE ARE ALL DIRTY JEWS!’ AND 'BEAT THE ANTI-SOVIETS!’ SOME TEARING THE BANNERS AND OTHERS BEATING UP THE OTHER DEMONSTRATORS BEFORE BUNDLING THEM INTO CARS. AS THEY DROVE OFF TOWARDS A POLICE STATION, ANOTHER CONVOY OF CARS SPED OUT OF THE KREMLIN’S SPASSKY GATE. AMONG THE PASSENGERS WAS ALEXANDER DUBCEK, THE DEPOSED CZECHOSLOVAK LEADER WHO HAD BEEN FLOWN TO MOSCOW IN HANDCUFFS ON THE NIGHT OF THE INVASION.

24. 1968 TRIALS DUE TO HER RECENT PREGNANCY SHE WAS NOT IMMEDIATELY TRIED IN COURT WITH THE OTHER DEMONSTRATORS. WHO RECEIVED HARSH SENTENCES OF UP TO SEVERAL YEARS IN PRISON DESPITE LAWYERS SHOWING THAT THERE WAS NO CRIMINAL INTENT IN THE DEMONSTRATION. DURING THE TIME BEFORE HER LATER ARREST IN DECEMBER 1969 SHE FOLLOWED THE TRIAL IN THE CHRONICLE OF CURRENT EVENTS AND SIGNED AN APPEAL TO THE UN COMMITTEE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS.

25. ARREST & CONFINEMENT IN JULY THE FOLLOWING YEAR SHE WAS PUT ON TRIAL AND FOUND GUILTY OF OFFENCES UNDER ARTICLE 190-1 OF THE RSFSR CRIMINAL CODE, COMMITTED WHILE OF ‘UNSOUND MIND’. GORBANEVSKAYA WAS SENTENCED TO INDEFINITE CONFINEMENT IN THE SERBSKY INSTITUTE, A PSYCHIATRIC INSTITUTION WHERE SHE WOULD BE TREATED FOR "SLUGGISH SCHIZOPHRENIA", A DIAGNOSIS COMMONLY GIVEN TO POLITICAL DISSIDENTS. SIGNS OF THE DISEASE INCLUDED “STUBBORNNESS AND INFLEXIBILITY OF CONVICTIONS” AND “REFORMIST DELUSIONS”. GORBANEVSKAYA WAS RELEASED FROM THE PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL TWO YEARS LATER IN FEBRUARY 1972. ON HER RELEASE, SHE EMIGRATED TO PARIS AND WORKED AS A JOURNALIST.

26. EXTRA INFORMATION ON AUGUST 25 2013 NATALYA GORBANEVSKAYA RETURNED TO RED SQUARE WITH NINE OTHER DEMONSTRATORS TO MARK THE 45TH ANNIVERSARY OF HER FAMOUS PROTEST. THEY WERE ARRESTED ON CHARGES OF HOLDING AN UNLICENSED RALLY. ONLY NINE OF HER POEMS HAD BEEN PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL JOURNALS BY THE TIME SHE QUIT THE USSR IN 1975 ; THE REST CIRCULATED PRIVATELY AS SAMIZDAT OR WERE PUBLISHED ABROAD (TAMIZDAT). IN 1976 US FOLK SINGER JOAN BAEZ RELEASED A SONG, NATALIA, DEDICATED TO GORBANEVSKAYA.

27. WEBLIOGRAPHY HTTP://WWW.RFERL.ORG/CONTENT/REMEMBERING-NATALYA-GORBANEVSKAYA/25224847.HTML HTTPS://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/NATALYA_GORBANEVSKAYA HTTP://WWW.TELEGRAPH.CO.UK/NEWS/OBITUARIES/10617528/NATALYA-GORBANEVSKAYA- OBITUARY.HTML HTTP://WWW.TELEGRAPH.CO.UK/NEWS/OBITUARIES/10617528/NATALYA-GORBANEVSKAYA- OBITUARY.HTML HTTPS://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/CHRONICLE_OF_CURRENT_EVENTS HTTP://WWW.BBC.CO.UK/NEWS/WORLD-EUROPE-25163062 HTTPS://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/PRAGUE_SPRING